Monday, January 06, 2014

I first "met" Joe Preston on September 28, 1991. At the time he was playing in a band called the Melvins who were touring the US with another little band called Nirvana. Nirvana was really good that night, but what I remember most about the evening was the colossal slow motion bludgeoning that Joe and his bandmates delivered to a mostly unprepared audience of stoned punks at the Marquee in New York City. To be clear, we didn't actually meet that night. However, my central nervous system was introduced to the glacial four stringed armament that has made Joe an international legend...and my trembling bowels threatened to evacuate the premises in the process. Even the leather daddies strolling around outside the S&M club across the street with their pierced cocks flapping all over the place seemed genuinely unnerved by the sheer heaviness of this avalanche of sound.

Fast forward to May 3, 1997. Neurosis triumphantly punished a sold out crowd at Portland, Oregon's now sadly defunct Satyricon with a strange one-man-band called Thrones opening. I didn't realize until afterwards that this unassuming fellow was the very same juggernaut I had seen several years earlier. Since then I've had the pleasure of seeing Joe perform lots of times. I've seen him during his brief stint with High On Fire and I've seen him bellow mammalian syllables with Last Empire while anchoring their flights of fancy to the benthic zone. A couple years ago he even came down to the DJ night I was doing at the time to perform a cinematic all-synth set for those brave enough to stand for the cyborg demon in a dark basement on a Wednesday night. Joe is the Hasil Adkins of low end frequencies. He is the Abner Jay of white noise amplification. He saw Slayer with Mace at a southeast Portland theater in 1984 and doesn't need to strut around in a bullet belt to prove it. This weekend the gentle lover of felines rightly celebrates the 20th anniversary of his solo band Thrones with a special show at Rotture in Portland, Oregon. He's asked me to play some records in between the live shenanigans, which is unfortunate because I've purchased about 5 records in the past year and all of them were released on Varèse Sarabande. But when legend summons, it is wise to heed the call. Congrats, Joe.